Age of Wonders: Planetfall is quite amazing. We could wrap things up with that statement alone and we feel most people would agree with us, but that's not what we'll do. Instead, we'll explain why we think this sped-up 'roided-out hybrid of Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic is worth every penny, and your attention even more so.

Planetfall is a 4X turn-based strategy game through-and-through, but the developers' understanding of what that does and does not entail makes for an experience unlike anything else. With Planetfall, you're getting fast and dynamic gameplay that masks the underlying depth of what is a high-end strategy and tactics title.

As you might expect, any given match of Age of Wonders: Planetfall begins with the player's "civilization" making - you've guessed it - planetfall, and then attempting to establish a viable colony. When you're simultaneously fighting off rabid natives and other races trying to do the same thing as you are, this is no small feat. In this regard, there's no avoiding the fact that Civilization is clearly a massive influence on Planetfall, but differences become apparent quickly. For the better, too, if you ask us.

Not only do core gameplay features of Planetfall ramp up way faster than they do in Civ games, but they're also more streamlined and intuitive, without losing much in the way of complexity. Then comes the game's HOMM pedigree, which kicks in during combat and faction interactions. Instead of playing out in the world map, tactical combat operations are fairly similar to something you'd expect to see in, say, XCOM, but with a roster of units that not even a Heroes of Might and Magic game would be ashamed of.

In addition to this, your combatants will move across the map faster than they do in other 4X titles of this caliber, allowing for a faster and more engaging pace. It's not only faster movement, either, because territorial acquisitions also function on the principle of taking entire regions, rather than relying on single-node growth. There are pros and cons to each approach to gameplay, of course, but we must admit that Age of Wonders: Planetfall certainly does feel fresh enough to matter.

While Age of Wonders games have never been particularly lacking in complexity, it does feel like Planetfall's newly-acquired Sci-Fi setting plays into the franchise' strengths better than any of its predecessors did. This may be because we're already familiar with the basics of its combat system from XCOM, and because Civilization competitors are few-and-far-between, but there's much to be said about the quality of this particular product, too.

In the end, it's hard not to come out and outright recommend purchasing Age of Wonders: Planetfall. If you're even remotely interested in 4X, this is the game you're going to want to keep in mind going forward, and given a few more months of constant and consistent content updates, we have no doubt it'll go toe-to-toe with both Endless Legend and Civilization VI easily.